OCTOBER 18, 2017
Portland and Seattle Volume XL No. 3
News ...............................3,9,10 A & E .....................................6-7
Opinion ...................................2 ICE in Oregon ...................9
Calendars ........................... 4-5 Bids/Classifieds ....................11
CHALLENGING PEOPLE TO SHAPE A BETTER FUTURE NOW
PHOTO COURTESY OF OREGON UNITED FOR ROHINGYAS
25
CENTS
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON SPEAKS
On Sept. 24 about 700 people rallied in downtown
Portland to protest the ethnic cleansing of
Rohingyas in Burma.
Portland’s small
Rohingya community
raising voices for US
intervention
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
Oregon
Rohingyas
Speak Out
on Genocide
By Christen McCurdy
Of The Skanner News
Michael Eric Dyson, sociology professor at Georgetown and prolific author delivered the A. Scott Bullitt Lecture in American History, titled “Martin Luther
King Jr. and (African) American Leadership in the 21st Century” Oct. 13 at Mount Zion Baptist Church.
I
PCC Gears Up for November Bond Measure
COURTESY OF ACLU OF OREGON
See ROHINGYAS on page 3
Mat dos Santos, legal
director at the ACLU
of Oregon.
ACLU Files FOIA
Request Over
ICE Records
page 9
If passed, funds would go toward updating job training centers and more
By Melanie Sevcenko
Of The Skanner News
P
ortland Community
College is asking that
voters think to the
future of workforce
training when they hit the
polls in November.
As the largest post-sec-
ondary institution in Ore-
gon, serving nearly 78,000
students, PCC has put for-
ward a bond measure that,
if passed, will provide $185
million towards revamp-
ing job training centers
and updating facilities to
be more modern, safe, and
cost and energy-efficient.
“It’s important for our
students to be trained and
study on equipment that’s
going to be used in the
workplace. It gives our
students an economic and
workforce advantage that
they might not have oth-
erwise,” said Sylvia Kelley,
executive vice president of
PCC, who called the some
of the college’s buildings
“ancient.”
The bond, called Mea-
sure 26-196, is a renewal
of an expiring $144 mil-
lion bond passed in 2000.
At that time internet use
accelerating in homes and
businesses, which meant
technologies in educa-
tional institutions had to
evolve. Seventy-two per-
cent of Multnomah County
residents voted to pass it
back then.
Moreover, says PCC, every
$1 invested in PCC returns
$12.50 to Oregon’s econo-
my in the form of state rev-
enue and social savings.
The college passed an-
other bond in 2008 — sep-
arate from Measure 26-196
— which, at $374 million,
was the largest in the state
at that time. Multnomah
County voted 63.2 percent
in favor of it.
In spite of the recession,
PCC was experiencing tre-
mendous growth, with a 40
percent increase in enroll-
ment. The 2008 capital con-
struction bond thus fun-
neled money into building
classrooms and expanding
State Settles With Erious Johnson,
Nkenge Harmon Johnson
Former top civil rights attorney cannot work for
the state again for five more years
The Skanner News Staff
Georgia Could Get
America’s First Black
Female Governor
page 9
Today’s bond, at $41 mil-
lion more, is estimated to
maintain the tax rate of 40
cents per $1,000 of assessed
property value. And that’s
good for the next 16 years.
“One thing that was im-
portant for us is recog-
nizing the increased cost
in housing in this region
and the growth that’s oc-
curred,” Kelley told The
Skanner. “And the afford-
ability for our students
and our communities
matter to us. We decided
it would be important for
us to maintain the same
estimated tax rate moving
forward.”
Simply put, passing the
bond measure will not cost
taxpayers anything extra.
T
he state of Oregon has settled
with the former head of the De-
partment of Justice’s civil rights
division, and with the current
president and CEO of the Urban
League of Portland. Erious Johnson
and Nkenge Harmon Johnson, who
are married, filed legal claims with
the state agencies that employed
them in 2015 and 2016 respectively.
The results of both claims were an-
nounced last week.
Erious Johnson sued the state in
2016 after the 2015 revelation that
the DOJ had run surveillance on
Twitter users using the #BlackLives-
See SETTLEMENT on page 3
PHOTO BY
n Malta, Mohammed Husson Ali
taught school and later worked as
a food monitor for the state welfare
program. Then he was expelled from
his community, first leaving for Bangla-
desh and then for Malaysia. In 2012, he
came to Portland and became a U.S. cit-
izen.
Ali is in constant contact with his fam-
ily members, who live in refugee camps
in Burma. And he’s part of a small,
growing movement to raise awareness
about the ethnic and religious persecu-
tion of Rohingyas in Myanmar.
According to Yusuf Iqbal, whose
Erious Johnson
See BOND on page 3
